Quote

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

John le Carre

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John le Carre
Age: 89 †
Born: 1931
Born: October 19
Died: 2020
Died: December 12
Actor
Film Producer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Spy
Writer
Sweetwater
Texas
David John Moore Cornwell
David Cornwell
John le Carre
Family
Unit
Experience
Units
Able
Insignificant
Work
Domestic
Life
Bliss
Absolutely
Marital
Example
Dysfunctional
Quite
Fatherhood

More quotes by John le Carre

Image
What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
John le Carre
Image
For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.
John le Carre
Image
I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
John le Carre
Image
There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
John le Carre
Image
Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.
John le Carre
Image
But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.
John le Carre
Image
When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
John le Carre
Image
Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
John le Carre
Image
It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.
John le Carre
Image
You should have died when I killed you.
John le Carre
Image
All power corrupts but some must govern.
John le Carre
Image
I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no-one else can make them.
John le Carre
Image
The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy.
John le Carre
Image
History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.
John le Carre
Image
In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire.
John le Carre
Image
Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.
John le Carre
Image
A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.
John le Carre
Image
If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.
John le Carre
Image
Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.
John le Carre
Image
Every writer knows he is spurious every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
John le Carre